INTERNATIONAL: On to Rearmament

Not so much as pausing in his stride, Realmleader Adolf Hitler accepted his smashing Saar plebiscite victory (TIME, Jan. 21), passed on last week to Nazidom's next objective: to force the Great Powers to recognize and assent to the Fatherland's rearmament in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

All week der Reichsführer stayed snug in his Bavarian mountain retreat. Such is popular ignorance under the Nazi system of "guided news," that in Berlin crowds gathered every day outside the Realmleader's office in Wilhelmstrasse, shouting plaintively from time to time, "Leader, dear Leader, come out to us!" Stolid police saw no reason why they should explain that the Dear Leader was some 400 miles away. Exultant Berlin papers hailed him as the greatest vote-getter of all time, far greater than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Now the world could no longer scoff, Germans exulted, at German election figures. Under League supervision in the Saar results were the same as they have been time and again in Germany— better than 90% for Hitler, whereas Roosevelt has never done better than 56%.

At the Ministry of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment joyous Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels hailed the Saar result as proof that Germans do not want Democracy, free speech, freedom of the Press, racial equality or cultural liberty. They want Nazi authority, as good Catholics want the authority of Rome, good Communists, the authority of Moscow. Even testy old Admiral von Levetzow, hard-boiled Nazi chief of Berlin police, beamed and bubbled with good humor last week. He decreed that Stresemannstrasse, named after Germany's late, great Nobel Peace Prize winning Foreign Minister (TIME, Dec. 20, 1926), should be renamed Saarlandestrasse. Since beauteous Widow Stresemann, once the "Queen Kathe" of swank Berlin night clubs, happens to be a Jewess, Admiral von Levetzow was congratulated last week on having winged two birds with one pellet.

"Peace with Honor!" In Realmleader Hitler's post-plebiscite radio address from Bavaria he repeated his familiar statement that, having got the Saar, Germany would ask no more territory from France. Then he thundered: "Great and unconditional is our determination to attain for Germany equality!"—i. e. in armaments.

To a British correspondent who managed to see him at Munich, Realmleader Hitler declared with rising inflection: "If anyone attacks Germany, he will fall into a hornet's nest because we love freedom as much as we love peace. . . . We give assurance that no pressure, no need, no force will ever lead us to sacrifice our honor, or the right to equality with other nations! I regard it as indispensable to announce this."

Thus the League of Nations was faced with Nazidom's next demand even before the League Council could get around last week to deciding how and when to give Germany the Saar. In Geneva all was gloom. The League plebiscite had produced a result diametrically opposed to the sympathies of most League statesmen, however much they had discounted it in advance. Glumly they agreed to hand over the Saar on March 1 to Germany—a nation which stalked out of the League as haughtily as did Japan.